On April 1st, 2025, Finland officially closed the Salmisaari coal power plant in Helsinki, marking an essential moment in the country’s energy history
By doing this, Finland lowered its reliance on coal for power generation to below 1%, an achievement that reached four years ahead of schedule.
The closure is part of other efforts by the Finnish government to phase out coal completely by 2029, transitioning to cleaner and more sustainable energy sources, primarily wind power.
I know a common complain on the US worker side is where will those coal workers go for work. Followed by a large disgruntled crowd of folks with it. How are the Finnish workers that are not working there fairing with stuff like this? I’m curious to how their reactions are compared to that of the United States.
where will the coal workers get their black lung from now 🥺
This was a topic in 2016, where Trump was all over keeping the coal workers in jobs. How many coal workers does actually USA have? Go ahead, look it up. Also look up how many he saved.
When I last did, I found that there were about 40 000 people employed in coal related jobs in USA, and he didn’t save a single one of them. The coal employment decreased during his term and ever since.
Every year, there are more than 3 million people born in USA. All of those will need a job in 18-25 years or so. Every year, 3 million people will be looking for a job. If the unemployment queue is increased by all the 40k coal employees being laid off at once, you would hardly notice it in the statistics.
I also looked up the Finnish companies. They gradually laid off 400 people from 2022 until today based on the decision to stop the coal power plants. It’s completely neligable. They can easily do other jobs. Even in the same industry, just not coal.
The whole talking point is a nothing-burger.
Well, I can say that the job market in Finland is very rough right now and that unemployment is really at a high… so it’s not good. I don’t know about any strong opinions on coal workers
unemployment is high, I’m sure, but how’s the homelessness and lack of access to healthcare?
It’s been getting worse during the reign of the current right-wing government, as has everything else in the country. Homelessness was extremely low for the past at least 10 years due to the housing policy but is now rapidly on the rise these days. Access to healthcare in the Nordics is often criticised for being too slow (lack of staff), but objectively and relatively it’s not horrible.